The Godfather Wars by Mark Seal

There's a great article in this month's Vanity Fair, "The Godfather Wars" by Mark Seal, in which the writer reveals Francis Ford Coppola's struggle to get the film made, as well as his vision of a story not about organized crime, but a family chronicle, "a metaphor for capitalism in America." Robert Evans, the head of production at Paramount Pictures, thought Coppola was nuts but ultimately acquiesced.

Seal also reveals some details which I'm sure I'd read before, but which I'd forgotten, and which were good fun to revisit on the page: the Mob's early endeavors to prevent the film from being made; how film executives hated Coppola's casting choices, "especially Pacino, who they felt was far too short" to play Michael Corleone -- Evans going so far as telling Coppola that "a runt will not play Michael"; Mario Puzo's insistence that Marlon Brando play the lead; and Coppola's casting of many of his family members in the film: his sister, Talia Shire, who played Connie Corleone, his father, Carmine Coppola, as a "gun-toting mobster," his wife and two sons in the baptism scene at the end, and his daughter, Sofia, as the baptized infant.

Seal quotes Al Pacino as saying he is at a loss as to why the movie that made him a star connected so powerfully with audiences everywhere: "I would guess," he tells me, "that it was a very good story, about a family, told unusually well by Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola."

Photo credit: Steve Schapiro